Category Archives: Software Tips

Update Quicken 2015 to R5 for taxes

Quicken has recently (3/24/2015) released their version R5 patch for Quicken 2015. If you like to have all your financial software up to date while doing taxes, you may want to backup and then perform the upgrade! There are a couple ways you can update, you can find info on both below. #1 Perform a “One Step Update” from the Tools menu in the application, after the update completes it should show you a notice about the new update: After

Updating VMware Tools fails [SOLVED] isolation.tools.guestInitiatedUpgrade.disable = “FALSE”

Updating VMware Tools fails with the error: Update Tools failed. Edit the virtual machine’s vmx file (2007298) Symptoms You are unable to update VMware Tools. Updating VMware Tools fails. You see the error: Update Tools failed. Edit the virtual machine’s vmx file, add the line below and try again. Please read KB article 1714 on tips for editing a vmx file. isolation.tools.guestInitiatedUpgrade.disable = “FALSE” To resolve this issue, enable VMware Tools updates from within the guest by updating the virtual machine

Move media files into individual folders with the same name

If you ever decide to backup your DVDs or other media to ISO format, it can be handy to have them each in their own folder. However, if you decide to do this after you have already ripped all the ISOs to a single folder then it can be a time consuming task. I have written batch (.bat) files to automate this process in the past, but recently I discovered a very nice Windows program that can do it for

Turn off Kindle singles recommendations etc. [SOLVED[

Some Kindle questions from readers: Q1. How do I turn off the annoying Kindle singles crap that takes up half of my Kindle’s screen?! Menu -> Settings -> Device options -> Personalize your Kindle -> Advanced Options -> Cover View Recommendations -> Off Q2. Can I get rid of recomendations, they are way off?! While you are at it, you can also turn off Special Offers Recommendations: Menu -> Settings -> Device options -> Personalize your Kindle -> Advanced Options

Fixed skewed pages in ScanSnap

I adore my Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 scanner. It lets me scan 70+ pages with ease (simplex or duplex) all the while OCRing every shred of text and therefore saving me oodles of time. Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner for PC and Machttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ATZ9QMOAwesome scanner which I really love. Easy to install and works seamlessly on my Windows 8 laptop. I use this all the time to scan and archive all the papers in my house and the… Read more However, today I

Order SQL query manually when numeric string representation is out of order

In some instances, doing a straight ORDER BY ASC (OR DESC) does not work as one might want: 0-50 101-200 201-300 301-400 401-500 501-600 51-100 601+ That is not how humans do it 😉 A way to get around this, is to add a new column and put in an ordering value, for instance: 1. 0-50 2. 51-100 3. 101-200 4. 201-300 5. 301-400 6. 401-500 7. 501-600 8. 601+ Now that is much better 🙂 Here is a real

Disable Skype voicemail [SOLVED]

I use a Google Voice number in conjunction with Skype. It allows me to receive calls at home via satellite internet. However, when I miss a call I want Google to take the voicemail not Skype. Thankfully, the steps for disabling Skype voicemail are fairly easy. First, go to the following URL: https://secure.skype.com/account?page=voicemail Second, click to uncheck the voicemail setting: That is it, Skype voicemail is now disabled! 🙂 *PS you may have to disable this annual, as I believe certain

Format SQL code

I have been writing copious quantities of SQL lately. Some of the queries are getting really long. When I am working with Navicat it has a nice ‘SQL beautify’ feature that takes messy SQL and makes it nice and tidy. 🙂 While that features is great when using Navicat for SQL editing, sometimes I need to workdirectly with SQL Server 2008 there is no comparable feature built into Microsoft’s SQL pane. 🙁 Thankfully, with a quick copy/paste there is an online tool